Holiday Spoon Club, The Story Behind the Name

Holidays growing up were always vibrant. My family has a strange sense of humour and a lot of emotional baggage bumping about. Like many families, once people were rosy and cheerful from food and spirits, emotions could get going. Old hurts bubble up or are remembered or haven't healed from the year before. Later in my life my family would invite people without family near to our home to share our meal- sounds generous, but the main benefit was that it made family drama near impossible because one does not dysfunction in front of strangers. Well, not usually.

So I never really knew what to expect. That is one of my main anxieties about the holidays, really, is that when people get emotional and then in close quarters things can get complicated quickly.

My senior year we had family in town and someone decided to make the stuffing a bit "greener" than usual, or that's how the story has evolved. It is possible that alcohol reacted to my 90 something year old Nebraskan grandmother's medication, but that makes a less dramatic story I suppose. Whatever it was, I would neither eat something cooked in a Turkey's butt cavity (still won't, I know that my real food friends are laughing at me right now....) nor did I drink. At some point in our lovely meal my grandmother launched out of her seat and crawled over the table, grabbed me by my collar and called me a lesbian liberal slut.

Of course there were no words I could offer. Lack of oxygen was the main reason. Once she let go and I realized everyone was laughing hysterically, I slipped out the door, got in my car, and headed for coffee.

Yay Thanksgiving.

Some years after that I attended Thanksgiving again at my families home, but this time I was newly wed, still childless. My mother and I were not on good terms, probably because of her dislike of my husband. My siblings were still in high school and the house was full of strangers. That meant the drama was more of the mock each other cruelly variety.

At some point I could not take it. I couldn't leave either. I couldn't eat either, not trusting what could be in the main meal food ingredients. I grabbed a pie from the buffet, a pecan cream cheese pie with lard and butter crust. I took the whole pie to the front parlour of their Victorian home and seated myself as hidden as I could from the main walkways and I started eating it with my fingers and crying.

The chaos continued to run through the house, folks laughing and children running and playing and laughing and the holiday tension building. Pie. Pie was making it better. Pie was making me forget infertility and the pull between in-laws and my family, the jealousies, the financial struggles of being a college student and buying a house and being newly wed and having my family not like my husband and at the same time pressuring us to have kids and mocking us for not being able to and everything else.

My mom's friend Mel came in the room and stood there silent for a moment and then left.

Busted. Oh no. I tried to compose myself, wipe tears off my face, the smears of cream cheese too.

But no. She brought spoons. Not one, but two. Together we sat there and ate the pie, quietly. When it was done she made the plate disappear and she gave me a hug. There was no mention again of the pie, when it was noticed missing, she helped cover up my crime. Unlike family, she did not mock me or hold it against me later.

And that year for Christmas? She gifted me a single spoon. So like a space traveller, who should never be without a towel, do not go into the holidays without your spoon.

Raise your spoons higher my friends and eat that pie. If you see someone in need of a spoon? Get the spoon for them. This is how someone brought peace to my holiday.

So the affirmation for today? We've all been there. You are not alone. I am not alone. Our stories are all different, they all have value. Dysfunctional families are everywhere, but so is pie. 

Simple but powerful words.